364 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 
quite clear that the provincial and non-official London zoologists 
view the present committee with suspicion, as not sufficiently repre- 
sentative of British zoology. Sir John Lubbock has succeeded Sir 
William Flower in the presidency, and he may be trusted to prevent 
any further irritation of the majority by a tactless disregard of its 
manifest wishes. It is a source of the deepest regret to all British 
zoologists that Sir William Flower himself should be corapelled, by 
need of rest, to refrain from any active part in the arrangements. 
STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY 
Ix connection with Sir Henry Howorth’s articles on Geological 
Nomenclature which we are now publishing, attention may be 
directed to a paper by Dr Charles R. Keyes, recently read before 
the St Louis Academy of Sciences, and abstracted in Sevence for 
October 29 (N.S., vol. vi, p. 655). Dr Keyes declares that “ for more 
than a score of years that branch of geology called stratigraphy has 
been practically at a standstill. Its methods are the same that were 
used fifty to seventy-five years ago.” At last, however, the problems 
of the correlation of sedimentary rocks can be attacked in a new way 
suggested by the field-work of many American geologists. Organic 
remains, it appears, may now be entirely omitted from consideration, 
and the relative age of the various strata ‘can be determined solely 
by observing the succession of geographical changes in the various 
large areas under comparison. These new methods, Dr Keyes 
remarks, are more or less complex and far from simple; but he is 
hopeful that they will eventually lead to a really natural classifica- 
tion of the rocks and definitely put an end to what has been aptly 
termed ‘parochial geology.’ He is especially sanguine as to the 
value of the results to be obtained from a detailed study of the 
phenomena of mountain-formation. We cannot follow the whole 
argument from the brief abstract; but any advance im methods 
which will enable us to restore the geographical features of wide 
areas of the earth’s surface at different successive geological periods 
will not only make a new era in geological science but also contri- 
bute most materially towards the solution of some of the perplexing, 
problems of zoology. 
THE GEOLOGY OF PATAGONIA 
Tuts leads us to refer again to the question of the Tertiary deposits 
of Patagonia and their remarkable mammalian fossils, discussed by 
Dr Florentino Ameghino in our October number (p. 256). Mr J. B.. 
Hatcher, who has spent much time in studying this southern ex- 
tremity of the American continent, now expresses the opinion that. 
